Imagine having a memory of a very traumatic event resurface in your mind after forgetting about it for twenty years. That is what happened to Eileen Franklin in 1989 when she had recovered what is called a repressed memory of her father, George Franklin, killing her friend in 1969, which eventually lead to her father getting a sentence of life in prison (Beaver, 1996). A repressed memory is a memory that is not forgotten, but is a memory of something traumatic that is blocked and not recovered unless triggered by something. Although her descriptions of the event were very vivid, describing colors and sounds, most of what she described could be proven inaccurate. Some of what she described was information that was misreported in newspapers that she had probably read or been told about in the past. This is an example of the misinformation effect. Misinformation effect is when someone is misled by information about an event that they witnessed and has an effect on how they remember that event later. This is just one example of how the misinformation effect can change how an event is described.
The study of the misinformation effect dates back to the 1970s with an experiment by Elizabeth Loftus and coworkers (Loftus, Miller, & Burns, Semantic Integration of Verbal Information Into a Visual Memory, 1978). The experiment involved participants that were shown a series of slides with a car that stops at a stop sign and then turns and hits a pedestrian. The participants were then asked if another car passed the red Datsun while it was stopped at the red stop sign, this would have been the control group. Another set of participants were asked the same question with the words “stop sign” replaced by the words “yield sign,” which ...
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... explanations for why the misinformation effect happens according to some of the most prominent researchers in this field.
In conclusion, misinformation effect is when someone is misled by information about an event that they witnessed and has an effect on how they remember that event later. This phenomenon can be found in everyday life with the smallest of things that do not matter, but it can also have an effect on how an eyewitness remembers an event, which could lead to the conviction of an innocent person. Although this has happened a lot in the past and still happens today, there have been plenty of steps taken to prevent it from happening, from educating people to the creation of DNA tests. This problem will probably never be completely solved but the more information learned about the misinformation effect the better off people will be in the future.
Memories can be altered based on acquisition, storage, and retrieval. Acquisition is what we notice or perceive based on what we are paying attention to. Storage is what information gets stored into one’s memory. Retrieval correlates with the false memory syndrome, which is recalling a previous traumatic experience that is false but believed to be true. The false memory syndrome is often noticed during police interrogations and leads to coerced confessions, which is when the individual being interrogated is essentially pressured to confess.
and the presence of distorted perceptions (Kolb & Whishaw, 2011). As a result of the
Furthermore, the authors aim to unfold the scientific logic of their analysis of the effects of hidden biases so people will be “better able to achieve the alignment,” between their behavior and intentions (Banaji and Greenwald, 2013) preface
False information provided by people, perhaps because believed it is what the interviewer wants to hear, The Hawthorne effect, invalidates it (Taylor, 1995).
The false memory and recovered memory literature is marked by controversy. It examines the phenomenon a variety of patients have exhibited: purportedly “losing” memories of trauma, only to recover them later in life (Gavlick, 2001). In these cases, temporary memory loss is attributed to psychological causes (i.e. a traumatic event) rather than known damage to the brain (Gavlick, 2001). While some assert that the creation of false memories through therapeutic practice is a serious concern and founded associations like the False Memory Syndrome Foundation (FMSF) in the U.S. and the British False Memory Society (BFMS) in order to advocate against psychological malpractice, other researchers contend that the evidence for “false memory syndrome,” or the recovery of untrue memories, is weak (Brewin & Andrews, 1998; Pope, 1996). The debate arose largely in the 1990s, though a consensus in the literature still has not been reached.
In “Why Facts Don’t Change our Minds” by Elizabeth Kolbert, She emphasizes that people continuously ignore facts and logic presented to them unless it goes along with their beliefs. This is called the confirmation bias. Specifically, she talks about a study conducted by Stanford University. In this study they have a group of students that believe in capital punishment read an article that is against capital punishment. The other group who is against capital punishment read a pro capital punishment article. Not surprisingly, these people didn’t change their view on capital punishment, instead they ended up agreeing with their future beliefs even more. This is a great example of confirmation bias and the backfire effect.
Minor consequences, might for instance, be confusing where one has placed something, like car keys. Such confusion can result in a simple inconvenience such as, the wasting of time. Although more serious consequence might for instance occur when one’s memory tricks the individual into giving false eyewitness accounts that might be costly to him, or other third parties. As such, it is important to critically analyze the dynamics of false memory formation and highlight methods that could be used to identi...
Repression of memories is a controversial topic that has been argued for many years. Some support the myth and it has been imposed in cases to obtain legal convictions. Although researchers have found methods to refute the myth, individuals still believe they have repressed a memory of a traumatic event. This has recently taken place in 2007 in the Colorado vs. Marshall case. Marshall Adam Walker was accused of sexually assaulting a seventeen year-old who claimed that he made three boys pose nude for videos. He was sentenced to 24 years to life in prison. One of the boys claimed to recover a repressed memory of the event while watching a movie (“Legal cases (53), 2010”). This student’s claim made an influential impact on the perpetrator’s sentence. This reflects the power these accusations have had recently in the media and in criminal cases that involve a traumatic event such as sexual assault.
Have you ever been an eyewitness at the scene of a crime? If you were, do you think that you would be able to accurately describe, in precise detail, everything that happened and remember distinct features of the suspect? Many people believe that yes they would be able to remember anything from the events that would happen and the different features of the suspect. Some people, in fact, are so sure of themselves after witnessing an event such as this that they are able to testify that what they think they saw was indeed what they saw. However, using an eyewitness as a source of evidence can be risky and is rarely 100% accurate. This can be proven by the theory of the possibility of false memory formation and the question of whether or not a memory can lie.
...Dermott, K. B. (1996). Misinformation effects in recall: Creating false memories through repeated retrieval. Journal of Memory and Language, 5(2), 300-318. doi: 10.1006/jmla.1996.0017
In his 1957 book The Hidden Persuaders, Vance Packard warned the American public that "Large-scale efforts are being made, often with impressive success, to channel our unthinking habits, our purchasing decisions, and our thought processes... Typically these efforts take place beneath our level of awareness; so that the appeals which move us are often, in a sense, hidden" (1). Packard was convinced - perhaps rightly so - that advertisers were "professional persuaders" whose marketing techniques were deceptive and overly manipulative. Not only were advertisers becomingly increasingly adept at developing campaigns, pitches, and slogans to send specific messages to targeted consumer populations, but some had gone so far as to suggest that such messages could be effective even if they were presented below the level of conscious awareness. James Vicary, one of the market researchers and entrepreneurs profiled in Packard's book, claimed to have developed a machine capable of flashing such unnoticeable, "subliminal messages" within big screen movies. Vicary had allegedly tested his technique by altering movies so that messages urging viewers to "Eat Popcorn" and to "Drink Coke" were displayed at regular intervals throughout the film for such brief durations that they could not be consciously perceived. Vicary claimed that his subliminal messages resulted in a significant increase in sales of popcorn and coke (1). Although no experiment involving subliminal messages has ever replicated the success which Vicary claimed to have achieved and, in fact, Vicary later admitted that it had been no more than a marketing gimmick, the possibility of subliminal or unconscious perception has not been dismissed. In fact, although the use of subliminal messages is generally considered a foolish and invalid practice, the more general phenomenon of subliminal/unconscious perception deserves to be reevaluated in light of current debates surrounding the nature of consciousness.
K., & Hoyle, J. D. (2011). Enhancing witness memory with focused meditation and eye-closure: Assessing the effects of misinformation. Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology, 26(2), 152-161.
Bartlett’s “War of the Ghosts” experiment (1932) is a classic example of false memories. The results of his study found participants would unintentionally alter the information of a story they read in a way that was more reflective of their own lives. Otagaar, et.al. (2013) examined false memories by developing non-believed memories in adults and children about taking a ride in a hot air balloon. The results of this study found that when the participants were asked immediately after reading a passage about this memory, most did not recall going on a hot air balloon. However, when the participants were called back a few months later, a higher percentage of participants recalled having experienc...
When someone tries to persuade others to join in thinking or believing something, a process takes place. Those receivers of the information are to process what the source is saying and in turn decide whether or not to go along with the idea. But what if people do not always process information, and what if they merely go with the crowd? The Elaboration Likelihood Theory (ELM) developed by Social psychologists Petty and Cacioppo, illustrates how persuasion, or the presentation of facts in order to move someone or thing a certain way, takes place. This model “analyzes the likelihood that receivers will cognitively elaborate,” in other words break down the information gathered and determine whether or not the message is enough to persuade the receiver (Enfante, Rancer & Avtgis, 2010, p. 172).
In his 1955 experiment, he had participants analyze the similarities in line length out loud, but planted “confederates” to give incorrect answers. To his surprise, 32% of participants conformed to the obviously incorrect answers per trial, and 76% conformed at least once (McLeod, 2008).